Back in 2020, MLB implemented a number of rule changes, both planned and forced by the pandemic-shortened season. Among them, none had the potential for dramatic change but with little actual effect on the game as the three-batter minimum rule. It was an inelegant solution to an infrequent problem: Subsequent investigation after its implementation has shown that the rule hasn’t addressed the pace-of-play issues at the heart of its intended effects.

Where the rule has had an outsized effect is in roster construction. Upon implementation, the value of a certain type of reliever — the Lefty One Out Guy (LOOGY) — was extinguished. Not that there were many LOOGYs left anyway, and the impact they had on games was fairly negligible in the grand scheme of things. This side effect of the rule was foreseen but still unfortunate nonetheless.

While the left-handed specialist has all but disappeared from major league rosters, left-handed relievers in general have felt the effects of this rule change as well. In 2022, southpaw relievers pitched around a quarter of all relief innings, which is right in line with the previous decade of usage. Unsurprisingly, more and more of those outings have come against right-handed batters. In 2013, nearly half of the batters left-handed relievers faced were left-handed as well. Last year, that rate fell to just over a third. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rays are infamous for running a tight ship payroll-wise, and because arbitration salaries are usually higher than rookie ones, they tend to trade arbitration-eligible players for younger, more cost-controlled talent. Then those new contributors develop into solid major leaguers, who become arbitration-eligible and therefore trade-eligible… and the cycle continues.

Yet the Rays have been good despite this. A major flaw in the described rinse-and-repeat style of roster management is that it depends on a regular influx of talent; without legitimate prospects in the farm system, you’d simply be making the big league squad worse, one trade at a time. Of course, the Rays are also known for their scouting and player development acumen, churning out viable big leaguers at a rate that, compared to other organizations, seems supersonic. But this too isn’t foolproof: Even if you run a supposedly smart front office, there’s a good chance that you’ll be wrong about a prospect or a trade acquisition more often than you’re right. That’s just how baseball works; you find yourself fighting to minimize risk, not to maximize return.

So really, the best option might be to avoid this conundrum in the first place. A good way to do that is to lock up your fresh-faced stars to contract extensions, à la the Braves of recent years. I don’t know if the Rays are following in Alex Anthopoulous’ footsteps, but they do seem to have become more open to the idea of making multiple multi-year commitments. As our Chris Gilligan covered, they recently signed Jeffrey Springs to a four-year contract extension with a club option for a fifth year. But the Rays weren’t done, as Jeff Passan reported last Friday:

Reliever Pete Fairbanks and the Tampa Bay Rays are in agreement on a three-year, $12 million contract extension, sources tell ESPN. Deal includes a fourth-year club option and comes off a year in which Fairbanks finished with 22 scoreless IP.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) January 27, 2023

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

For the second year in a row, BBWAA voters elected just one player to the Hall of Fame. While the results may feel underwhelming — at least, beyond the fact that Scott Rolen is a very solid addition to Cooperstown — the advances made by a handful of candidates who didn’t get to 75% this year bolster the likelihood that they will someday, whether it’s via the writers’ ballot or a small committee to be named later. Looking ahead, there’s nothing to suggest that we’re about to see another wave that brings to mind the record-setting 22 candidates the writers elected over the 2014-20 span, but the next few ballots will be more crowded than the last couple, and should make for some lively election cycles.

Underlying this is a change in the dynamics of Hall of Fame candidacies, one that I’ve been noting in this space in recent years. From 1966 to 2005, only three candidates recovered from debuts below 25% and eventually reached 75%, even with 15 years of eligibility: Duke Snider (17.0% in 1970, elected in ’81), Don Drysdale (21.0% in 1975, elected in ’84) and Billy Williams (23.4% in 1982, elected in ’87). Since then, we’ve seen six players elected despite such slow starts, including three from 2017-23. From the 15-year eligibility period came Bruce Sutter (23.9% in 1994, elected in 2006) and Bert Blyleven (17.5% in 1998, elected in 2011), and then once the Hall unilaterally decided to cut eligibility from 15 years to 10 — less to clean up the ballots than to try moving the intractable debate over PED-related candidates out of the spotlight, and give voters less time to soften their attitudes — Tim Raines (24.3% in 2008, elected in ’17), Mike Mussina (20.3% in 2014, elected in ’19), Larry Walker (20.3% in ’11, elected in ’20), and now Rolen, whose 10.2% in 2018 represents the lowest debut share of any modern candidate elected by the writers. Read the rest of this entry »

At this point in the offseason, the micro-level events that will shape the 2023 baseball season have almost all been settled. Aside from the odd trade, teams have largely set their rosters. Injuries, unexpected performances, and trades will start to affect individual fortunes when games begin, but we’re at a local lull.

But there’s big news afoot for the game in a macro sense. Diamond Sports Group, the company that owns Bally Sports Network and thus the rights to 14 teams’ local broadcasts (plus minority stakes in two team-owned broadcasts)*, is careening towards bankruptcy. Per Bloomberg, the actual bankruptcy declaration is merely a formality: the firm will reportedly skip an interest payment due in February, triggering a restructuring that will wipe out the firm’s existing equity and convert all but the most senior debt into equity stakes in the new company, leaving its current creditors in charge.

That’s a shocking turn of events for a media group that sold for more than $10 billion in 2019. Heck, it’s a shocking turn of events for a company that made more than $2 billion in revenues in the first nine months of 2022, and more than $3 billion in 2021. It might also affect long-term cashflows for every team in the league; after all, local broadcast rights are a key piece of the revenue pie, and broadcast rights have exploded along with MLB revenues in the past decade.

How could this have happened? Which teams will be impacted, and what will that impact be? How will the league adapt to the new media landscape brought on by this bankruptcy and any subsequent dominos that fall as a result? I don’t have the answer to all of those questions, but I’ll walk through each in turn before speculating about what might happen next. Read the rest of this entry »

Who was better, Joe Mauer or Chase Utley? I asked that question in a Twitter poll earlier this week and the result was… well, lopsided. The erstwhile Minnesota Twins catcher/first baseman garnered 79.5% of the 1,362 votes cast, while the former Philadelphia Phillies and Los Angeles Dodgers second baseman received just 20.5%. With both debuting on next year’s Hall of Fame ballot — one that will include numerous notable holdovers — that breakdown could be telling. While it seems unlikely that Utley will join the likes of Bobby Grich and Lou Whitaker as a one-and-done snub, might he poll just as poorly, or even worse, with BBWAA voters as he did in the head-to-head matchup with Mauer?

Utley finished his career with 61.6 fWAR and 64.5 bWAR.
Mauer finished his career with 53.0 fWAR and 55.2 bWAR.

Adrián Beltré, who will also debut on the ballot, is a shoo-in to be elected in his first year of eligibility. It is much for that reason that the Mauer-Utley comparison is meaningful — at least for the segment of voters that includes yours truly. Eight of the 10 candidates I voted for this year will be returning, and Beltré is a no-brainer. That leaves one open slot. Moreover, I’m not alone in this conundrum. A total of 54 voters put checkmarks next to 10 names, with eight ballots being identical to mine. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Orioles owner John Angelos reneging on his offer to show reporters the team’s financial information, the O’s acquiring Cole Irvin, the Astros hiring the Braves’ Dana Brown as their new GM, and the Twins trading for Michael A. Taylor to be Byron Buxton’s backup, plus more ways in which baseball is different from other sports (27:12), a mini Stat Blast about Jeff Kent’s ability to turn the double play (46:32), and a Past Blast from 1961 (55:58). Then (1:03:55) they bring on Joseph L. Price, professor emeritus at Whittier College, to discuss the past, present, and future of the Baseball Reliquary and the Shrine of the Eternals (a.k.a. “The People’s Hall of Fame”), as well as Whittier’s Institute for Baseball Studies and Price’s prolific National Anthem career.

Audio intro: Sherry Davis, “Broken Promises”
Audio interstitial: Jeff Buckley, “Eternal Life”
Audio outro: Alasdair Roberts, “Roomful of Relics”

Link to Rays prospects list
Link to Angelos-Connolly exchange
Link to Connolly on the exchange
Link to Connolly on the books
Link to MLBTR on Irvin
Link to Carrie Mathison’s fallow yellow
Link to Dana Brown announcement
Link to MLBTR on Brown
Link to New York Post on Bagwell
Link to Houston Chronicle on Bagwell
Link to Passan on Crane and Click
Link to Ben Clemens on Taylor
Link to CF DRS leaders since 2015
Link to baseball exceptionalism wiki
Link to “The Hockey Song”
Link to “The Hockey Song” wiki
Link to mound visit rules
Link to Ray Ratto on the HoF
Link to Posnanski on Kent
Link to Slusser on Kent
Link to 2B ISO+ leaders
Link to 2B wRC+ leaders
Link to Morosi on Kent
Link to Russell’s Kent stats
Link to Russell on 1B fielding credit
Link to 1961 story source
Link to 1961 Winter Meetings (SABR)
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack
Link to Past Blast wiki
Link to Hall of Stats
Link to Hall of Stats EW episode
Link to BBTF Hall of Merit
Link to Prof. Price’s Whittier page
Link to Annie Savoy’s monologue
Link to Dalkowski EW episode
Link to Shelton EW episode
Link to Baseball Reliquary website
Link to Baseball Reliquary wiki
Link to Institute for Baseball Studies
Link to NYT on the Reliquary
Link to Daily News on the Reliquary
Link to LAist on the Institute
Link to O.C. Register on the Reliquary
Link to Dock Ellis induction
Link to Nancy Faust wiki
Link to Price’s Rounding the Bases
Link to ESPN on Price’s singing
Link to video on Price’s singing route
Link to Price’s Perfect Pitch

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It’s nearly February and the free agent pool is thinning out. Most of the big names have already flown off the board. By our projections, only five unsigned players forecast to amass at least 1 WAR in the upcoming season, only three of whom are position players. Most teams have already filled out their Opening Day starting lineups; now their focus shifts to improving the fringes of their 26-man roster, searching for a couple of additional wins or insurance in case of injuries. The Mariners and the A’s, two AL West teams with very different outlooks for 2023, each recently made such an addition, inking a veteran to bolster infield depth. Let’s take a look.

Mariners sign Tommy La Stella to a league-minimum deal

Formerly a bench infielder and designated pinch hitter for the Cubs (his league-leading 91 pinch hit appearances in 2018 has not been matched since), La Stella was traded to the Angels with two years of team control remaining for a prospect who never threw a pitch in Chicago’s system. In 2019, he maintained the contact skills and excellent plate discipline that made him a league-average hitter, but he improved in another facet of his game that was emblematic of the juiced ball era. That year, his fly ball rate, which had previously sat around the 20% mark, climbed to 25%; that, combined with a small increase in his pull rate, led to a power break out. Despite lacking traditional power indicators like barrels and a high maximum exit velocity, La Stella made the most of his aerial contact (and the favorable dimensions of Angels Stadium) to post a career-high .486 slugging percentage and hit home runs at a rate of 30 per 600 PA, an excellent mark even during the heightened offensive environment. His absolute refusal to swing and miss played a big part in this as well; his minuscule 8.7% strikeout rate gave him plenty of balls in play, many of which left the yard:

Read the rest of this entry »

2:02	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and happy Friday, folks! Welcome to my first chat since the Hall of Fame results were announced. My reaction piece is here: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/rolen-into-cooperstown-bbwaa-voters-avoid-…

2:02	Jay Jaffe: and my candidate-by-candidate rundown here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-candidate-by-candidate-look-at-the-2023-…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: I spoke to the Ballot Tracker’s mastermind, Ryan Thibodaux, for the first time in our collective history for today’s FanGraphs Audio here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-audio-ryan-thibodaux-chats-ballo…

2:04	Jay Jaffe: I’ll have my five-year HOF election outlook piece on Monday, and another FGA spot for next Friday as well.

2:06	Jay Jaffe: My guess is Kent, even though he has to cool his heels for the next three years. Utley’s facing quite a crowd on the next two ballots, and while I’ll find room for him, I don’t know that everybody who wants to vote for him necessarily will get to right off the bat.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rooting for Team USA in international sports can be a little… touchy. America’s great rivals vary from sport to sport and come from every corner of the globe. Ours is a nation of vast influence and combative people, so adversaries pop up everywhere. (At one point, the U.S. women’s national soccer team had a vicious rivalry with Norway. Norway! You must really want a fight if you have beef with Norway.)

But our most intense rivalries were forged in the Cold War, when American politicians and media painted Communist nations as an unknowable other against whom we were pitted in a battle for survival. Before glasnost, the internet, and the professionalization of Olympic sports, teams from Communist countries were so mysterious they could only be feared. We did not see Soviet stars in the NBA or NHL as we do now, nor Cuban baseball players and boxers in western competition. We only encountered them as they appeared every four years to pit their mettle against that of American college athletes at the Olympics. That’s how the Miracle on Ice became such a definitive part of American mythology; rare is the scenario in which an American team — much less an American men’s team in a relatively popular sport — can credibly claim to have faced and overcome an insurmountable opponent. But what the Soviets were to hockey, Cuba was to baseball.

That history makes Wednesday something of a momentous occasion. That night, Cuba’s 30-man roster for the upcoming World Baseball Classic was announced. And for the first time in the modern history of international baseball, Team Cuba will include major league players. The three biggest names on the list are White Sox teammates Yoán Moncada and Luis Robert Jr. Also along for the ride: Yoenis Cespedes, three players from the affiliated American minor leagues, and two more from NPB. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello, and welcome to an article where I’m wrong about everything. Like literally all of the things. Here’s what happened. I was thinking about the long, glorious farewell tour of Albert Pujols. After a five-year stretch during which he posted a wRC+ of 84, he put up a 151 wRC+ in 2022. That was the best he’d hit since his age-30 season. Pujols largely put up those numbers by smashing lefties. His 113 wRC+ against righties was good, but against lefties that number was 214. MVP Paul Goldschmidt was the only batter who performed better against lefties (minimum 130 plate appearances vs. southpaws).

Pujols’ resurgence really started in 2021, when he had a 145 wRC+ against lefties and a 35 against righties. That’s the season I was more interested in. As I thought about it, I started wondering whether the last part of his journey — established veteran defies the aging curve by settling comfortably into a platoon role — is happening more frequently. I had the sense that it was happening more frequently.

I was wrong. It is not happening more frequently. Here’s a graph comparing the last 11 years to the previous 10 years:

Read the rest of this entry »